In the Dark: Tomcats

Eric D. Snider

In the movie "Tomcats," there's a guy who has a cancerous testicle removed. But he wants to keep it as a trophy, so he sends his buddy into the hospital lab to steal it, but it's slippery, and the guy drops it, and after a series of misadventures it winds up in the hospital cafeteria, where a doctor eats it.

If you still want to see this movie, let me point something out: No, you don't. It is apocalyptically bad. Ancient prophets foretold the coming of this movie, and warned us against it. If we view it anyway, our souls will be damned to the torment of…well, there won't be any additional punishment, actually. God will let us off with time served.

As soon as the testicle started bouncing around, I thought, Someone is going to eat this testicle. I could think of no other way the scene could end. It was a foregone conclusion. It is sobering to realize that society has reached the point where if I see an errant testicle in a movie, I automatically assume someone's going to wind up ingesting it — and I'm right.

"Tomcats" is about a group of bachelors who never want to get married. This isn't because they're gay, but because they hate women. Well, they like having sex with women; they just don't want to be committed to them.

These are men who, in real life, would be shunned by any self-respecting woman. Lucky for them, the movie contains no self-respecting women, only large-bosomed tramps who will sleep with anyone.

The guys establish a betting pool on who will be the last one to get married. They invest the money wisely, and after a few years it's up to $500,000, with only two bachelors left standing. They are played by Jerry O'Connell and Jake Busey. (I believe the characters have names, too, but I don't feel like looking them up.) Jerry O'Connell was the fat kid in "Stand By Me," but now he's well-shaped and handsome, though he looks too much like Jason Bateman for me to be comfortable around him. Jake Busey is the talentless retard son of Gary Busey. The less said about Jake Busey, the better.

Anyway, Jerry O'Connell goes to Vegas, where he incurs a large gambling debt to a Mafia type played by Jewish guy Bill Maher. (When Bill Maher is the best actor in your movie, you're in trouble. You'd better have a testicle-eating scene to add some quality.) Jerry figures the only way to get the $50,000 he needs is to make Jake Busey get married.

Why not just ask his friends if he can borrow $50,000 from the half-million pool to avoid being killed? Why not just ask Jake himself, since Jake is evidently some kind of rich guy? You should not ask the movie these questions, as you will just provoke it.

So he finds a woman Jake once slept with whom he actually kind of liked, and she's eager to marry Jake and then leave him, just to teach him a lesson (and to get half of the wager money). But Jerry accidentally falls in love with this woman, too, and then someone's ball gets cut off and fed to a doctor. The end.

You can tell from the previews that "Tomcats" is 100-percent laugh-free. But you still might consider seeing it just for the raunchy nudity. Alas, "Tomcats" fails to deliver even on this very simple point. There are no naked people in this movie. However, it does have a scene — and I cannot emphasize this enough — where a man's testicle gets eaten. Why would you watch this? You'd have to be nuts.